SALAH SCORES TWICE AS LIVERPOOL QUADRUPLE QUEST ON COURSE,MAN. UNITED SUFFERS HUGE DEFEAT AT ANFIELD.
Liverpool overcame a lacklustre Manchester United 4-0 to go top of the Premier League (PL) table and extend their unbeaten record in the league to 13 matches.
The blue half of Manchester will face off against Brighton & Hove Albion on Wednesday evening – in which a victory for the ‘Cityzens’ would see them back at the PL summit. However, Liverpool came into the game brimming with confidence after Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final victory over their title rivals, and they picked up exactly where they left off when Sadio Mané played Trent Alexander-Arnlod into acres of space, and the wing-back found the unmarked Luis Díaz with a pinpoint pass for the Colombian to tap in from point-blank range.
The ‘Reds’ were completely dominant in an incredibly one-sided first half at Anfield, and they doubled their advantage not long after when Mané’s clever chipped ball over the top played Mohamed Salah in, and the Egyptian shot past David de Gea and into the left corner to make it 2-0. Salah, who has now scored 21 league goals this season, is only the second player to both score and assist in home and away games against Manchester United in a single Premier League season, after Mesut Ozil in 2015-16. This was the 74th goal the ‘Red Devils’ have conceded against Liverpool in the Premier League, which is more than any other opponent in the competition.
The visitors were slightly improved in the early stages of the second half – in truth, they couldn’t have been much worse – as Liverpool lacked a crispness and purpose in their passing. Having had nothing to do all evening, Alisson did well to deny Marcus Rashford in a one-on-one situation. However, the game was put to bed with the final 20 minutes approaching when Liverpool countered and Díaz chipped a cross into the area for Mané, and the Senegalese calmly side footed his first-time shot into the right corner to put Klopp’s side out of sight.
Salah added extra gloss to the scoreline in the closing stages when he dinked the ball over de Gea to take the aggregate scoreline for the H2H matches this season to 9-0. Ultimately, Liverpool delivered a performance that rendered a shell-shocked United team helpless and once again underlined the scale of the task ahead for those at Old Trafford.
